Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Basics of Philosophical Psychology
- Part III The Cartesian Self in History
- Part IV Value Spheres
- Chapter 10 A First Diagnosis and Therapy for Modernity
- Chapter 11 Value Spheres Defined and the State
- Chapter 12 The Serving Spheres
- Chapter 13 Technology
- Chapter 14 Utilitarian or Cartesian Approach
- Chapter 15 The Media and the Professions
- Chapter 16 Science
- Chapter 17 Art and Religion
- Chapter 18 Sport
- Chapter 19 Latin and Absolute Love
- Part V A Self-Understanding Not Only for the West
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 18 - Sport
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Basics of Philosophical Psychology
- Part III The Cartesian Self in History
- Part IV Value Spheres
- Chapter 10 A First Diagnosis and Therapy for Modernity
- Chapter 11 Value Spheres Defined and the State
- Chapter 12 The Serving Spheres
- Chapter 13 Technology
- Chapter 14 Utilitarian or Cartesian Approach
- Chapter 15 The Media and the Professions
- Chapter 16 Science
- Chapter 17 Art and Religion
- Chapter 18 Sport
- Chapter 19 Latin and Absolute Love
- Part V A Self-Understanding Not Only for the West
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Hegel wanted to admit only such nonserving activities as enact reason or judgment, recognizing only religion, art, and science. This is probably also true of Weber, but he rightly presumed that human sexual activities often differ enough from animal ones by their inclusion of judgment. Yet there is another class of activities that both have a significance that saves life from Sisyphean absurdity and meet the definition of a value sphere. They require judgment, offer schooling, and can become a profession with perfection standards. These are the activities of sport. They have been performed in many premodern societies, in ancient China, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mexico, and other ones. They have often been embedded in religious rituals, but today we can see that they aim at an irreducible value not aimed at another sphere. Sport emancipated itself from political and religious dependency only in the nineteenth century, though no less than science and art (and the media and justice enforcement in the serving spheres), it is in great danger of subjection to stronger spheres.
Today, sport has become a field for enacting extraordinariness, perhaps the field for extraordinariness par excellence. Like the value of religion, art, science, and eroticism, the value of sport is clear for the adherents and remains closed for the value-blind. It attracts a community who develop standards of excellence that do not depend on the will of the majority but spring from the nature of the sport activity, just as the communities of scientists and artists develop standards of excellence that do not depend on the will of the majority but spring from the nature of science and art.
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- Rethinking the Western Understanding of the Self , pp. 158 - 160Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009